International Crowdsourcing Initiative to Combat the E. Coli Breakout in Germany

Guest Post: International Crowdsourcing Initiative to Combat the E. Coli Breakout in Germany

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June 8, 2011 

Editor’s Note: In light of the recent E coli outbreak in Germany, NGS Leaders invited Joyce Peng from BGI to comment on the organization’s efforts to understand the culprit. Below Joyce describes BGI’s efforts to rally the international community in combating the outbreak. – Eric Glazer
In response to the recent E. coli outbreak in Germany, BGI and its collaborators at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf have released their third version of the assembled genome, which includes new data from this E. coli O104 (ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.contig.20110606.fa.gz ). The FTP site contains a file that provides the PCR primer sequences which researchers have used to create diagnostic kits for rapid identification of this highly infectious bacterium.